Too much uncertainty over seabed mining application

Too much uncertainty for seabed mining application to be
approved – KASM

The degree of uncertainty around the
environmental impacts of seabed mining is too great for the
EPA to grant New Zealand’s first-ever marine license to
mine the seabed, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining said today.

Giving the community organisation’s closing submission
to the EPA hearings into seabed mining today, KASM lawyer
Duncan Currie pointed out the many international – and
national – legal precedents showing that in the face of
uncertainty and lack of information, the EPA’s Decision
Making Committee (DMC) had no choice but to take a
precautionary approach and decline the application.

Trans Tasman Resources wants to mine 50 million tonnes a
year – for 20 years - from the seabed in a 66sqkm area in
the South Taranaki Bight off Patea, but simply hadn’t
provided sufficient scientific information to satisfy
anybody on the environmental impact, he said.

During
the hearings, the company had proposed an alternative
approach of first undertaking two years of baseline
monitoring before starting mining. This was, Currie told
the hearing, “completely unacceptable” and would be an
“invalid delegation to the EPA” which was required to
take a decision on the evidence given in this
hearing.

“Instead, the consent should be declined and
the applicant should go and establish the baseline before
re-applying, if they choose to reapply, then have that
baseline tested in the hearing process the way it should
have been in this hearing.”

KASM agreed with the
EPA staff report, released this week, which pointed out the
degree of uncertainty was too great to be satisfactorily
addressed by the EPA certifying an environmental management
plan at a later date.

“The mining will have the
potential through the sedimentation, plume and noise to
cause significant damage to the benthic environment,
phytoplankton and zooplankton, fish and marine mammals,”
Currie told the hearing.

Granting consent with an
“adaptive management” approach “in the hope that
conditions will ameliorate the problems in time” would be
wrong.

“If full-scale mining was to commence at
the scale laid before the DMC, it would be very difficult to
know the effects, due to time lags, and again, the lack of a
baseline means that ascertaining the effects would be
impossible.

“Who is to know if Maui’s dolphins
have left for other areas, were injured or killed, or did
not find feed, when no acoustic or proper aerial surveys
were done beforehand? And who is to know if sediment on the
area and in the traps is having an effect for decades? And
who is to know how long the recovery period will
take?”

A new NIWA report given to the EPA last
week confirmed the South Taranaki Bight is a foraging ground
for blue whales. The report was based on the scientific
expedition in January where 50 blue whales were seen in the
area.

For both blue whales and Maui’s dolphins,
“there is… little if any chance of detecting impacts
during or after mining before damage is done. We know that
they are long-lived, slow reproducing animals and that it
would be difficult to detect changes in survival or
reproductive rates. All we are left with is uncertainty, and
risk.”

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